Nonprofit Organization US POSTAGE PAID Stillwater, OK Permit No.

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Facts & Figures for December 16, 2012 Attendance (153 and 140)...........................293 Sunday School...........118 General Fund Receipts....$3,531.20 Capital Fund Receipts..........................$650.00 Loose Offering/Sunday School.....$122.00 Non-Budget Funds Receipts......$3,159.00 Preliminary Facts & Figures as of November 30, 2012 YTD Budget Receipts.........$426,709.47 YTD Budget Expenses...$412,780.78 Net Receipts over Expenses$13,928.69 Presented by Kay Smith, Treasurer, dkwsmith@suddenlink.net

Volume 2012
Announcements Care and Feeding of a Candle Birthdays & Anniversaries Facts & Figures

The Stillwater Christian

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December 18

In This Issue

Central Area Churches Praying for Churches This week we are praying for: Disciple Christian in Newcastle Next week we are praying for: FCC in Newcastle

Christmas Eve Service, Dec 24th at 7pm Make plans to attend our special Candlelight and Communion Service at FCC on Christmas Eve. All children who come, FCC children, grandchildren visiting, community children, will be invited to be a part of Nativity in costume as the Christmas Story is being told. It will be a special opportunity for children to be in a Christmas Pageant, but without the stress rehearsals, and time commitments. It will be an opportunity to make a special memory. Invite your family, friends and neighbors to come with you that evening; it will be beautiful! Church Office Help, Dec. 20th or 21st? Could you come help in the office for a few hours on either of these days? There will lots of work to get done and your help would be very appreciated!

First Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) Of Stillwater, OK, Inc. 411 W. Mathews Ave. Stillwater, OK 74075-7517

ADDRESS SERVICE REQUESTED

Thank you, Candleholder Cleaners! Thanks to Lorne and Alice Parker, Craig and Leila Beeby, and Mark and Linda Thomas who took time out of their busy schedule to help clean up the candleholders on Monday night, which will be used on Christmas Eve. Preparing the Sanctuary for Christmas Sunday after second service we will need people to stay for about an hour to prepare the sanctuary for Christmas Eve. Please join us! From the Office: Due to the holidays, there will not be a newsletter next week. The office will be closed the 24th-26th, and Jan. 1st
Join us this Sunday for Owen Caytons Message, The Comfort and Challenge of God with Us based on Micah 5:2-5a & Luke 1:39-55 Traditional 9:00am Sunday School 10:10 Contemporary 11:10

The Stillwater Christian is a weekly publication of First Christian Church (Disciples of Christ). The deadline for articles each week is 1pm Monday. Tracy Freeman, Editor editor@fcc-stillwater.org Church Office Phone: 405.372.7722 Fax: 405.372.7726 Find The Stillwater Christian and more information at www.fcc-stillwater.org

Send prayer requests and general email to office@fcc-stillwater.org

Owen Cayton, Senior Minister

The Care and Feeding of A Candle

pastor@fcc-stillwater.org

I am very torn about what to write this week. As this is the last newsletter of 2012, I wanted to express my gratitude to you all for another year as your minister and my hopes for the work we will do on behalf of the gospel in the upcoming year. I wanted to write something that might provide both warmth and challenge for Christmas. I cannot write that article. The events of Friday in Newtown, CT have consumed most of my waking attention, just as it has consumed the attention of the media (of all the media news, opinion, social, etc.). The voices of so many people exploring such a massive range of topics are overwhelming. I almost said the conversation, but that would be a stretch in even the loosest sense of the word. Conversation assumes that we listen to one another and we try to understand what the other person or people are trying to say, rather than seek to twist their words or even change them altogether. To be sure, the problem is complex. It balances freedoms and restrictions and stigmas and safety and emotion andwell the list could go on. It is a mixture of subjects including guns, mental health, individual responsibility, corporate responsibility, movies and TV, video games, and the way these types of incidents are reported by the news. To assume that any sort of solution to the complex problem will have one dimension is foolhardy in the extreme. To assume that the blame for something like this atrocity lies in any one area fails to see the problem as complex. There is plenty of blame, if you want to call it that, to go around if it were as simple as saying that all the blame belongs to the one who picked up the gun and killed all of those people, then the conversation would be over already, there would really be no problem to solve. But, that it happened and that it keeps happening is a problem. Violence is not a new thing. Indeed, as I said on Sunday in the Advent meditation, we have shifted narratives in our Advent journey. We have moved from Johns cry in the wilderness, Prepare the way of the Lord, to The slaughter of the innocents (see Matthew 2:16-18). One of the thrusts of the story we celebrate at Christmas is that Jesus comes, and he is not so unthreatening to us as we would like to keep him: wrapped up in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger. He comes to change us. He comes to challenge us. He comes to show us a different way of life. Herod knows! Herod relies on the method of protection and safety that he knows: violence. If Jesus is eliminated he would no longer be a threat to Herod. If Jesus is killed as a child he is no longer a threat to the powers and principalities of the world. If Jesus dies helpless and vulnerable he can no longer be a threat to the ways we choose to do things. The way of violence stands in sharp contrast to the way of God. It has from the very beginning and remains so. In Genesis 6 violence is the thing that has so blotted creation that God seeks to make an end to all flesh. It has corrupted that which God called so very good in Genesis 1 so much that God wants to start over (Genesis 6:11-13). It is also, finally, the very thing that God gives up at the end of that narrative. In Genesis 9 God sets His bow in the clouds God hangs up the weapons of war and makes a covenant with Noah and all creation that no longer will God make war on the creature; God wont wipe us out and start again. It is almost

(cont.) as if God has learned something about violence itself. To suggest that we are a culture that glorifies violence is beyond argument, though we all would point our fingers away from ourselves and the things we do toward something else. But, our culture as a whole glorifies it. We use it for entertainment: playing violent games, going to movies, watching television shows that all have as their driving force, that which keeps them exciting and engaging and, well, entertaining, violence. I remember a line from the movie Clueless where the main character makes the point ironically but succinctly, Until mankind is peaceful enough not to have violence on the news, there's no point in taking it out of shows that need it for entertainment value. That is not even to mention the violent entertainment we crave in sports. And I have to confess Im right there in it with everyone else I love Bond movies. I have seen Lethal Weapons 1, 2 and yes, I even sat through 3 and 4 for crying out loud! Further, and probably more antithetical to the gospel, is that we as a culture dare to suggest that violence will save us; that a righteous person or group of people using just the right amount of deadly force can protect us from evil. It can save and protect what we have, our property, our family, and our way of life (sound familiar?). The problem is that we as people of faith, as Christians have given ourselves to rely on something else to save us. We proclaim that God not violence (or anything else for that matter) but God saves us! Jesus does not remain a baby in a manger; he is not done in by Herod. Instead, he grows up. He becomes a Jewish prophet calling us to do such things as turn the other cheek and love the enemy and put away our sword. He proclaims that the Kingdom of God is not something brought in with weapons. And he exposes our violence. When confronted with the Kingdom of God, we cry out No! and we enact violence on God by placing Jesus on a cross. When confronted with our violence, however, God turns the tables on us. In our fundamental act of violence on God, God takes the consequences of that violence, of that rejection: death into the divine life and renders those consequences empty of their power in Christs resurrection. There is the way of God and there is the way of violence. May we find the strength, the vision, the light, and the hope in these dark and difficult days to seek the way of God. Shalom, Pastor Owen Happy Birthday to: 12/19 Lauren Hollis; 12/21 Bill Brown, Courtney Levings, Elizabeth Rogers; 12/23 Kevin Haken, 12/24 Kelsea Anderson, Robert Biven; 12/27 Jillian Miller; 12/28 Ryan Cathey; 12/29 Georgia Defee, Doug Foster, Terry Varnell; 12/30 Tom Stevens, Charley Johnson; 12/31 Oakley Gross; 1/1 Ally Edwards Happy Anniversary to: 12/19 Ron and Cara Beer; 12/20 Doug and Jacque Foster; 12/22 Cecil and Shirley Brownlee, Ray and Jean Sharp; 12/26 Lyle and Adeana Sallee; 12/29 John and Karen Severe; 12/31 Delbert and Cecelia McGaha, Mark and Tracy Nordquist; 1/1 David and Sara Peters